slip of the tongue
by thir13enth
Summary: After dropping ice cream on her thigh, he apologized, "Oh sorry, do you want me to…clean that up for you?" Maiko, with a wink.


**Some Maiko is a good toss in the mix of Zutara I have—there's still a presence of Zuko (and sometimes that's all that really matters)!**

**Enjoy…or maybe bon appetit is the better expression in this case. ;)**

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It was an accident waiting to happen.

And at the end of all of it, Mai wasn't sure if the ice cream acted on its own accord, or if Zuko had a say in where the dessert fell:

**divider**

"I thought since it was so hot…" he explained without giving her much context, "Here."

A glistening pink—she assumed strawberry—ice cream appeared from his side and came towards her. She stretched out an expectant hand and watched as the sweet thoroughly missed, slipping off its cone and landing with a splat on her bare thigh.

She sucked in a breath to suppress a yelp at the frosty spill.

"Thanks," she said, looking up to see his cutely guilty face. "This is really…refreshing."

Genuinely apologetic, he quickly tried to make up for the icy drop.

He said worriedly, "Oh sorry, do you want me to…clean that up for you?"

At first she thought he had intentionally created that suggestive pause between his words, but upon seeing his concerned face, she began to question whether that innuendo was what she actually wanted to hear herself.

And that fact made her pause to think for a second—in shock that she was subconsciously thinking of Zuko in that manner in the first place.

She almost leapt up in panic when his hand pressed down gently on the skin just above her knee, his warm fingertips evoking some kind of a tickle—one that crept all the way up her inner thigh. She inhaled sharply, controlling the sudden touch and refocusing her attention back to whatever the hell the firebender boy was doing.

"Zuko, what are you—?" Her eyebrows furrowed upon seeing what he was attempting to do. "I am _not _eating that ice cream," she declared when he pressed the empty cone against her ice-creamed skin in an attempt to scoop the half-intact dessert back to its place.

"Well then, here," he said, passing her the other cone, which ended up—fortunately—in her left hand. "I paid good money for this," he explained, holding up the recently salvaged ice-cream like a gold prize. "I'm not letting it go to waste." He looked down back on Mai's thigh, noticing that there was still quite a bit of sweet leftover.

To her surprise, he caught a drip of pink running from the top of her leg down toward the sand, swiping his finger over her inner thigh and then bringing it to his mouth to lick off the melted cream. She gasped at the sudden brush of contact but closed her mouth quickly.

He seemed to notice the sudden tenseness of her thigh and looked up at her to see her face, but she immediately turned to the left in order to hide her intense blush, her face burning hotter than the sun raining down on them.

Though, she had to admit that her face wasn't the only thing that was heating up.

Oh _Spirits, _this was _so_ embarrassing!

And then he squeezed her thigh, right above her knee.

"Agh!" she exclaimed, unable to control herself. She dared to look over to see what the hell he was up to now.

"Hey, calm down," he assured her.

Her skin burned under his tight grasp and her free hand clenched the sand behind her.

And then—La! What was this boy doing?—he ducked down and licked some ice cream off her thigh.

She twitched, her stomach knotting into itself, her fingers digging deeper into the sand, and the leg that he had licked kicked up.

"Hold still!" he demanded, and his grip tightened around her lower thigh, stirring up even more nerves in her leg, all of which trailed upwards to no good.

Her hip practically rocked up at the arousal.

His grip grew stronger as he tried to control her jerking and prevent his teeth from knocking into her skin. Eventually, his face rose and he insisted that she hold his ice cream cone.

By now, she was breaking out into a cold sweat, and relieved for a moment, he wasn't doing anything to tickle her, she—half-paralyzed—accepted his ice cream cone into her free hand.

To her horror, his now free hand joined his other hand on her thigh—but this one was on the opposite side of the ice cream spill on her leg, towards the junction of her leg and her hip.

Mai cursed under her breath, feeling her right leg tense up under his hands, her eyebrows furrowed, her teeth clenched, and her fingers squeezing down on the ice cream cones that she was holding as tightly as possible without breaking them. Why was she so ticklish! Spirits, she thought she had gotten over her ticklish after all the assaults that she received from all her friends over her childhood. She thought that she had mastered control of her body!

Why then, was she melting under a simple hold of her leg? He wasn't even trying to tickle her or—

She suddenly noticed his amber eyes observing her face. He looked over her tense shoulders, frozen torso, rigid jaw, widened eyes, and whitened knuckles with a quick glance.

Maybe it was just her imagination, but for a second something mysteriously dark travelled over his face, and she could have sworn she saw a smirk crawl over his lips before he turned his mouth back down on her thigh.

She didn't know what the _hell_ he was doing with his tongue, but butterflies flew through her skin, ecstasy leaping over her body. In silent and controlled panic, she looked down at him, noticing that his lips had locked over her skin and he was trailing his tongue slowly—almost artistically—over the skin of her thigh. Her heart beat quicker as his mouth moved further up her leg.

Her lips pursed open to let herself breathe, and she took deep heavy inhales in order to calm herself down—but to no avail; her eyelids started to close as her body filled up with the urge to just kick herself out of this buildup of sensation that was filling her up to the brim. She caught him slyly glance up at her clearly pained face.

The bastard! He was doing this on purpose!—and she inhaled sharply, feeling his teeth graze over her soft skin before he lightly bit her upper thigh. Before she came back to her senses, his tongue followed the path of an inappropriately fallen pink drop of ice cream down her inner thigh just inches from—

She moaned, immediately cursing at herself for allowing that to slip through her lips and bit down on her lower lip hard.

Finally, she decided that she couldn't beat it.

"Zu-Zuko! People are watching!" she whined softly.

His face rose—for a moment, she was relieved—and replied, "Let them watch." He kissed her briefly, leaving some ice cream on her lips before settling back down to finish the rest of the dessert off her thigh, his dark hair sweeping chills over her skin.

She gasped again, and this time she worried that her bathing suit top wasn't going to hide anything.

Senses overloaded and her arousal unbridled, she attempted to pry her leg out of his clutches, but he only responded with a tighter grip. She felt him smirk against her skin, his teeth glazing over her sensitive skin.

"Oh please!" she begged him—and at this point, she wasn't sure if she was trying to make him stop or insist he continue.

He traced the fingers of one hand up and down her thigh, making her shudder and interrupt her plea. "Almost done," he replied, in a low growl. One final lick and it was all over.

Mai realized that she had been holding her breath all this time and exhaled in a great relief that it was all over and that he had taken his mouth and hands off her, the remnants of his saliva cooling over her thigh like a ghost of his teasing.

She was still frozen though, and she doubted that anything comprehendible was running in her head at all.

"Hm," he remarked in approval, running one finger down her now clean thigh.

His eyes shifted up to take a look at her face and she caught the end of a mischievous smile flickering across his golden orbs. He leaned in and finished the remaining ice cream that he had previously left on her lips. His face remained centimeters away from hers afterwards, holding her dark eyes under his gaze.

"Alright, I can take my ice cream now," he half-whispered, his breath falling over her neck. His eyes didn't leave hers as she raised his practically completely melted ice cream up to him.

She almost leapt at feeling cold splash over her left collarbone.

Her eyes widened, realizing that ice cream had fallen over her again. Unable to voice out anything in her surprise, she looked back at him, her mouth held open wide, seeing his almost predatory smirk and then the purposely turned-over ice cream cone in his hand.

"Oops," he said, his face still right in front of hers.

She swallowed dryly, knowing what was coming—and on the fine line between wanting and welcoming him and discouraging and scolding him.

"Do you want me to lick that off you?" he asked slowly, enunciating each syllable huskily.

"Li-li-lick?" her voice fluttered in the same manner as her stirred heartbeat.

"Oh, my bad," he said gently, his mouth hovering over the skin of her neck, making its way toward her left collarbone, where a new trail of fallen dessert started. "Did I say 'lick?'…I meant to say 'clean'…how dirty of me…"

She found nothing to say but a whimpered yes.

"Mm…I said that?" he asked in a teasing coo, his lips and tongue gliding, following a drip down past her collarbone, toward the upper curve of some lesser tanned skin.

"Must have been a slip of the tongue."

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**;)**

**Do drop a review!**

**thir13enth**


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